ELKINS — Although Randolph County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Shawn Dilly said last week that Randolph County Schools has used up all its “snow days” for the school year, on Monday school was once again called off in Randolph due to the weather.

Randolph County Schools Director of Transportation and School Safety Nick Alfred has been the one faced with the difficult task of determining when to call school off during poor weather conditions.

“I go out and check the conditions of the roads and there’s several people I talk to about the roads,” Alfred told The Inter-Mountain this week. “I usually contact the DOH (Department of Highways), who does a great job working hard on the roads, and I talk with some of the county’s bus drivers. The National Weather Service also does weather briefings that I watch and they will help us with some information about storms and timing of what is coming up.”

Alfred said determining whether or not to have school or to have a delay comes down to making a prediction.

“Sometimes you have to try and predict, which is sometimes difficult, especially in the mornings when it comes to delays,” Alfred said. “You have to look ahead and try and determine if (the weather) is going to be good in a couple of hours or not.”

After driving the county roads and getting reports from others, Alfred said the determination of calling school comes down to just one thing — the safety of students.

“The buses being safe is the main thing we look at,” Alfred said. “The last thing we want to do is put our buses and kids in a bad situation if we can avoid it. It takes a lot of checking on things, listening to people, and gathering as much information as you can.”

In Randolph County, the school system officially has both “snow days” — when school is canceled for the day — and “non-traditional instructional days” when students are asked to stay home because of the weather, but still do school work online.

Randolph County teachers are asked to report to school on the non-traditional instructional days, also known as “E-learning days.”

“In Randolph County we have E-learning days and our teachers go to school on those days,” Mike DiPasquale, Director of Personnel, Human Resources and Staff Development for Randolph County Schools, told The Inter-Mountain this week. “Some of the other counties refer to the E-learning days as ‘arctic days.'”

DiPasquale said neither teachers or students are required to come to school on traditional “snow days.”

“The only way that our staff would have to come in on snow days is if there was an extenuating circumstance,” DiPasquale said. “There has to be a pretty significant reason for our staff to come in if there are no students in the building.”

DiPasquale added that the rules are different when it comes to Board of Education Office employees coming to work.

“Board office employees report, unless there is an extenuating circumstance with the weather being super bad and Dr. (Shawn) Dilly would close the Board office,” DiPasquale said.

Although Randolph County has officially used up all of its snow days and non-traditional instruction days for this school year, DiPasquale said students don’t have to worry about making up snow days during Spring Break, which is scheduled for March 30 through April 3.

“Spring Break is guaranteed this year,” DiPasquale said. “Those are all out of calendar days.”

The proposed makeup dates for this year’s snow days, to this point, are April 6 and June 4, 5, 8 and 9.